


Defiance

by TheRavenintheMoon



Series: Long Lost Souls [10]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen, Treasure Hunt, Zul'Farrak, dungeon groups usually come in fives...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRavenintheMoon/pseuds/TheRavenintheMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some of our intrepid heroes band together to liberate certain artifacts from the ancient troll city of Zul'Farrak. They find a bit more than they bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defiance

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I probably own nothing, except maybe my characters. I know that Blizzard, however, owns a small chunk of my soul...

**_Defiant_ **

**_Merlayne and Dindrane_ **

_This could be going better._ Merlayne winced as her voidwalker vanished in a puff of smoke, his shackle-like bracers falling to the ground for the fourth time since she had entered Zul’Farrak. She was out of soul shards, low on health, and there were still two trolls—no just one now, as her corruption ran its course and downed the bigger of the two. She focused on the last troll, a burst of green light streaming between her and her enemy. A feral grin twisted the worgen’s lips as the troll’s life drained away, restoring a portion of her lost health. At the last possible moment, she switched spells, draining the troll’s soul to replenish her stock of shards. She would need them later.

The troll’s corpse hit the ground, and Merlayne, sensing nothing too alarmingly close, risked a brief respite. Dropping to a crouch within the circle of her fallen foes, she tore into a chunk of cheese, relishing the sharp taste. She had not stopped to eat since she had set out on her one-woman invasion of the old troll city. Feeling better, she gulped a few mouthfuls of water, worried at how little she had left. She had not expected this assault to last this long. Her plan had been simple: _get in, grab the sword, get out._

She heard the pad of troll feet on shifting sand from somewhere down the corridor. Standing quickly, she attempted to summon her voidwalker, but it refused, unhappy with the four ‘deaths’ it had suffered in quick succession. With a curse, she rushed the relatively simpler summon of the imp, praying it would be enough for what was revealed to be a lone troll scout. _Praying?_

_Merlayne,_ she thought, _you just might be in over your head…_

∞

“By the Light, it’s hot,” Jana complained, reining her elekk to a halt just out of sight of the curved line of Sandfury graves.

“You’d think you’d never been to the desert, the way you carry on,” Hravn grumbled, petting her panting stormsaber encouragingly as she stopped beside the draenei.

Jana glared at the gnome. “I just don’t think it’s ever been quite this bad,” she said.

“Yes, it has,” Sophrynia growled. “And _you_ don’t have fur.” Her horse, bred for mountain temperatures, drooped as soon as she pulled up next to her friends.

“All right, that’s enough,” Dindrane broke in, letting her talbuk carry her a few paces past the others. “We are here because Kelsey Steelspark has asked us to help the goblins on behalf of the gnomes who find themselves here in Tanaris. And the goblins, in turn, have asked us to retrieve some rather, shall we say, questionable artifacts from their neighbors in Zul’Farrak. Not least among these artifacts, the great sword—”

“Dindrane, we know,” Soph interrupted the mage’s speech. “We were there.” Jana and Hravn nodded fervently. The sooner they entered the city, the sooner they could get in out of the sun.

“Fine,” Dindrane sighed. “Jana, are you willing to play healer today? These trolls won’t appreciate what amounts to a four-man invasion—”

“Dindrane!” All three of her companions glared at her.

“We have done this before,” Jana said testily. “Remember Shadowfang Keep? And Blackfathom? And Uldaman…”

“Okay, okay, no need to list everything we’ve done,” Dindrane said, adding with a touch of sarcasm, “I was there.”

The four grinned. It was always like this—the three of them puncturing Dindrane’s ‘I’m the leader’ balloon. Not that any of the three would have wanted the job. The senior mage of the group was very good at getting them out alive. She took great pride in their trust. With a nod, she wheeled her talbuk and brazenly rode straight up to the gap in the wall where the great gates of the once-mighty Sandfury Empire had once stood. The others followed, a bit more cautiously. Some trolls were known to work outside the walls. But if there were any at the moment, none of them bothered the four adventurers.

It was apparent from the moment they entered the city that there was no way to sneak past the vast amount of trolls who were, for some reason, standing around apparently on high alert.

“Hmph,” Hravn sniffed. “‘Almost empty,’ they said. Never trust a goblin.”

“Sh,” Dindrane hissed. She gestured to one of a clump of trolls, muttered a spell, and the troll dropped, a harmless sheep. Hravn’s frostbolt hit another in the chest, just as Soph dropped into bear-form and charged forward. A moment later, all three trolls lay dead in the path. Jana, concentrating on spells she wasn’t perfectly comfortable using, wrapped a healing spell around Soph for good measure, and the four carried on, slaughtering any troll who tried to sound the alarm.

None of them noticed anything odd until they paused for breath beside a large tablet, covered in some sort of troll text. Hravn stared up at it.

“This thing is massive. How are we supposed to move it, let alone take it back to Gadgetzan?” she asked.

Sophrynia blinked, clearly thinking, then stood up on two legs to dig in her bag, producing a large wad of parchments of varying thicknesses. “I forgot to leave this back in Darnassus,” she said. “We could, maybe, make an impression of the bits that look important?”

Hravn nodded, taking some of the supplies and starting on the lower end while Soph stretched to her full worgen height and began at the top. Dindrane, confident that they could manage, pulled out the map of the city one of the goblins had given them, trying to determine how accurate it was by what they had passed so that she could work out how far they still needed to go. Jana, feeling useless, wandered a little way away from the group, staring at a motionless scarab. The four had encountered quite a few of the massive bugs, but they had not wasted any energy fighting the harmless creatures. This one, though, appeared to be dead. Approaching it, the priest threw her hand over her nose, trying to block the stench of burnt scarab. There was a troll corpse just beyond the scarab, preternaturally aged and badly burned as well. A string of such corpses seemed to lead around a twist in the wall. Jana trotted back to the others.

“Dindrane,” she said quietly, “I think someone else is here.”

The mage glanced up from the map, a frown still on her face. Apparently she was having trouble deciphering it. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jana,” she said. “Who would be stupid enough to come here?”

“Another opportunist, looking for a payday?” Jana shrugged. “Come and see.”

Leaving the other two to finish the transfer of the tablet, Jana led Dindrane to the string of burnt trolls.

“A fire mage?” Dindrane asked.

Jana shook her head. “I don’t think trolls grow that old naturally.”

Dindrane nudged the nearest corpse with a booted foot, turning it onto its back for a better look at the aged face. She wrinkled her nose. “Warlock,” she murmured in distaste. “Ours or theirs, I wonder.”

Jana frowned, and Dindrane shrugged in response. “Steamwheedle trade with the Horde as well as the Alliance. C’mon. Let’s get the others. I don’t fancy taking on a crazy Horde warlock, just you and me.”

“Why crazy?” Jana asked as they turned back.

“There’s no evidence of anything killing those trolls other than a warlock. Whoever it is came alone into a city _full_  of vicious trolls. That’s not exactly sane,” Dindrane said.

“What’s not sane?” Hravn asked, carefully folding the last parchment impression into her bag. Jana explained as Sophrynia packed up the last of her spare parchment.

“Now we know why the trolls are on high alert,” Soph said, grinning slightly. Then she sobered. “So, what do we do?” They all looked at Dindrane, who frowned.

“We find the artifacts we were sent to find,” she said at last. “As for this warlock, well, if he’s Alliance, we won’t leave him for dead. That is, if he isn’t dead already.”

“And if he’s Horde?” Hravn asked. “I don’t think I could leave even my worst enemy here to die.”

Jana shook her head. “No orc would accept our help—”

“A goblin might, or…” Hravn trailed off.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Dindrane said. She turned to the druid. “Soph, can you sneak over and see who he is?”

Dropping to all fours, the Soph-cat nodded, and faded into the sand. A few minutes later, she returned, standing straight and holding up her hands as her friends, weapons raised at the movement, slowly lowered them. Soph grinned.

“ _She_ is a worgen, and she is alive.”

“Well, then,” Dindrane smiled at their own resident worgen. “Let’s see what we can do to help.”

∞

The first indication Merlayne had that she was not alone was the warmth of a priest’s healing spell wrapping around her, closing the wounds that she had clumsily bandaged with cloth looted from the trolls she had killed. Lifting her head, blinking in exhaustion, she saw four figures moving slowly towards her, weapons lowered in a gesture of wary peace. Scrubbing the sand from her eyes, she recognized a draenei, probably the priest who had healed her, a worgen cat-druid, their sentry keeping eyes and ears alert, a gnome mage, who radiated a fair amount of power despite her stature, and a human, also a mage, who seemed to be in charge.

It was the human Merlayne addressed. “Wh—who are you?” She grimaced as her tongue stuck in her dry mouth, blurring the words.

“We’re—collectors—at the moment. For the goblins in Gadgetzan,” the mage said, pulling a skin of water from her bag and offering it to Merlayne. She grabbed at it and drank greedily, trying to ignore the fact that it was warm. The sudden influx of liquid made her head spin and her stomach lurch, but she refused to show it in front of these strangers. When she had drained the skin, she handed it back. Smiling thinly, the mage took it.

“I’m Dindrane,” she said, when she finally realized that Merlayne was not going to thank her for an entire skin of water. The mage nodded at the gnome, the draenei, and the worgen in turn. “This is Hravn, Janariana, and Sophrynia.”

Merlayne perked up at the last name. “Sophrynia?” she said. “The one who saved our brave worgen warriors who were wounded in the battle for Gilneas?”

The druid nodded her heavy cat’s head. “If only I could have saved more,” she said sincerely. “Who are you?”

“Merlayne,” the warlock said, forcing herself to her feet and making the sway at her sudden movement look like it was on purpose.

The druid’s eyes narrowed. “The one who saved the king at Tempest’s Reach?” she asked. There was some emotion in her voice that Merlayne couldn’t quite make out.

Merlayne sniffed. Probably a royalist… “I assassinated the eastern lords, yes.”

She did not expect the four to frown. “A pity,” Dindrane said quietly. “They were so much harder to kill after they were dead.”

“What?” Merlayne snapped.

“Troll,” Sophrynia growled in warning, whirling, suddenly a bear, and charging the lone scout that came around the corner. A blast of arcane magic followed by a frostbolt slammed the troll back. A purple flame lit above the troll’s head as Janariana, out of habit it seemed, blasted its mind as well, and the troll fell with a dull thud to the packed sand. They were an efficient team, Merlayne had to give them that.

Sophrynia, the closest, checked the troll’s pockets as Dindrane turned back to Merlayne. “Come with us.” Merlayne bristled, mistaking the tone, assuming it wasn’t a request. Standing straight, she ignored the group, and summoned her voidwalker. She had been sitting in the corner, dealing with lone trolls and wishing she’d brought more water for long enough that it responded promptly. Then she glared at the human mage.

“Thank you for the offer,” she said sarcastically, “but I’m fine on my own.”

Dindrane looked bewildered for a moment. “You were crouched in a hole, with no way forward and no way back.”

“I was waiting for the right moment,” Merlayne said, waving a hand in affected non-chalance.

The mage frowned. “You would have died here if we hadn’t found you.”

“I never asked you to save me,” Merlayne snarled.

“You’ll never make it out.” Merlayne heard the mockery underneath— _what’s wrong with you, coming here alone, walking away…_

“Just watch me,” she hissed, brushing past the glaring mage.

Behind her, she heard the human mutter, “Bloody warlocks.” Merlayne grinned to herself. _Right back at you, bloody mage_ , she thought. It was high time she got what she had come for.

∞

“It’s not worth it, Dindrane, “ Jana said quietly, placing a restraining hand on her friend’s shoulder.

The mage pulled away with a sigh. “I know, I just—” She threw up her hands in frustration.

Hravn stepped forward. “Come on, then. Let’s get what we came for and get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

The others nodded, and headed out, their task slightly easier because some of the trolls had been killed by Merlayne. Once they had successfully collected goo from two separate cauldrons, carefully labeled and placed in two different packs, they turned towards the great temple, only to find the courtyard swamped with trolls.

“Okay,” Soph said slowly. “What’s happening here?”

Dindrane, shielding her eyes, squinted at the top of the temple and groaned. “You know those hostages the goblins mentioned?”

“More like sacrifices. They asked if we could free their explosives expert,” Hravn responded. “Said we’d need him to blow the gate if he hadn’t already.”

“I think that warlock released the sacrifices,” Dindrane said.

“And this is what the troll priest called up to stop them? They’ll be slaughtered!” Jana said.

“What are we standing around for, then?” Soph growled.

Between Merlayne, the sacrifices, and the surprise hit the four adventurers made on the rear of the troll mob, the trolls really didn’t stand a chance. As the four reached the foot of the temple, Merlayne stopped, a few steps above them, and glared down at them.

“I said I didn’t need your help,” she snarled.

“No,” Jana said. Merlayne whirled on her, but there was no mockery in the draenei’s voice. “We could use yours though.”

“We what?” Dindrane asked.

“You what?” Merlayne said at exactly the same time.

Jana sighed. “The hydra and its handler. They’re going to be hard to kill, and we’ve been instructed to not damage the hide… We could use another spellcaster, so long as you don’t burn it to a crisp.”

“That’s likely,” Dindrane muttered. Hravn kicked her. Merlayne, eyes narrowed in thought, realized that they weren’t going to leave her alone until they were safely back in Gadgetzan. And she’d seen the way they fought. Maybe they were exactly what she needed.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll help. With your monster and with the chief.”

∞

Merlayne was fuming, and it had nothing to do with the heat blasting the air outside the inn back in Gadgetzan. She was sitting, not quite with the group that had, well, all right, rescued her, but she wasn’t sitting apart from them either. Arms crossed, she listened to them in sulky defiance. Oh, that mage had been extremely meticulous in counting out Merlayne’s share of the reward money. That slimy, stinking, arrogant—

No one had mentioned that the sword was part of the goblins’ request. When the chief of the Sandfury had fallen, she’d moved in. They could take anything they wanted, all she needed was the half-sword he carried. She already had the other half in her pack…but the other worgen, closer than Merlayne, had picked it up, handed it over to the mage for ‘safe-keeping’… And it was Merlayne who had put in the real work, found out that the trolls even had the sword, done the research, nearly died. She’d never asked those meddling Alliance-lovers to do anything—

And they’d settled their packs, mounted up without a word, expecting Merlayne to follow their cue, and had ridden out, hard, with the last few trolls on their heels. Merlayne had not had time to articulate her outrage. She certainly wasn’t going to request what was rightfully hers. Sitting in the inn, as some gnome or other asked where they’d managed to pick up a warlock, she thought that the only way she could possibly have gotten the group’s attention was to set the mage on fire. Oh, she’d love to do that…after watching the mage, cool as you please, hand over one half of the sword, then turn back and ask if Merlayne had found the other bit since they’d had no luck… That green-skinned good-for-nothing goblin would probably get bored of it in a week and smelt it for scraps…

And now the four were talking about her, how she’d been foolhardy enough to venture into Zul’Farrak on her own. Commending her bravery…her…defiance. She blinked. It was the nicest thing anyone had said about her in a long while, though it was a slightly sour compliment, coming from the mage…who, now that Merlayne had glanced up and caught her expression, didn’t seem too pleased to be giving it. The perky gnome was grinning at Merlayne now, welcoming the four’s new companion. Merlayne grinned coldly in return. Their what? Bloody hell, who were these people, that this gnome would accept some worgen warlock on their good word? Merlayne didn’t even care—

But they had resources, connections, friends in high places, from what she could gather about the politics of Gadgetzan. So she sat up a bit straighter, as the gnome asked her a question, smiled more warmly, and resolved to answer politely. _Defiant_ , she grinned. _That’s me. I don’t need anybody,_ she thought. _But every once in a while, it is nice to have someone who thinks I do._  


End file.
